L'Heure de Nuit
Guerlain (2012)

Love,grief,beauty.like slinking around the bedroom in a silky nightgown,powering one's nose and applying lipistick on an early spring morning with the windows wide open and the smell of a flower garden pervading the room.this fragrance might say mystique,be exotic and erotic. there is something about in that,evokes Anna Karenina as played by Greta Garbo.indeed any woman played by Greta Garbo.a great screen actress.

Sophisticated,gorgeous,classic and a little melancholic.it opens with bright, sparkling citrusy notes and all those comfy,fluffy powdery flowers, heliotrope, iris and violet,last a very long time. little touch of rose and vanilla, then the just right amount of clean musk,some dry wood.the dry down appeals endless and it's very musky with slight aromatic sweetness.a mixture of Prada Infusion d'Iris and Alien,and above all reminds me of vintage L'heure bleuem.sillage is very good and longevity is great on my skin.

Bergamot and mature yellow peaches are the two notes that open up this creation. The fruit is of moderate sweetness, and an aniseed is mixed in after a while, gives the top notes and added twist.

Gradually an orange blossom arises, gaining in strength overtime and mixing with the top notes; this combination develops into a delicious and rather unique aroma that last for about an hour. The more the drydown lasts, the more a agreeable jasmine is present, and I also get a rose impression that is of note mainly for its somewhat bland and standardised innocuousness.

The base is lowers the standard compared to the level of this olfactory journey so far. There is a heliotrope pleasant brights adding a certain softness, a vanilla that, again, is pleasant and whose main merit is, beside a nice whiff of caramel component attached to it at times, that it is neither intrusively sweet nor cloying. And, finally, there arrives the predictable array of white musks that is as unexciting as precipitation after one month of English winter rain.

I get moderate sillage, very good projection and an excellent eleven hours of longevity on my skin.

This spring creation is not and easy one to evaluate fairly. On the one hand there are times or originality and lovely beauty, on the other hand there are periods of generic and synthetic dullness. The later are particularly obvious in the base. Dr Samuel Johnson, commenting on William Pitt's approaches, opined that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Maybe the vanilla/white-musks combination in the base could become the last refuge of some perfumers? Buy some shares in Firmenich maybe?

L'Heure de Nuit is said to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue, a great creation that is reported to be inspired by Impressionism. This flanker, L'Heure de Nuit, is a pale and rather superficial homage, more like a painting whose water colours have been thinned out by rain damage. Still, overall it is not bad and just teeters at the border between a score of neutral vs. positive. Given the benefit of the doubt: 3/5

L'Heure Bleue with a drop of Insolence. If this sounds lovely to you (and it is) save the $300 and do it yourself.

L'Huere Bleue is one of my favorite perfumes, so I ignored L'Heure de Nuit for years knowing a mere flanker could never dethrone my queen. But, after giving it a proper chance, it has won me over.

Nuit isn't as bafflingly complex as Bleue, though they share the same doughy core - that complicated mix of stuff that smells simultaneously like almonds, bread, grease paint, old makeup, and spices. While Bleue gains a lot of mystery from topnotes shrouded in powder, Nuit is more straightforward with a mix of violets, grape, and Guerlain's signature cherry, all of which melt together well with the clove aspect of the heartnotes, giving a spicy sweet fruitiness juxtaposed with the spiced dough. This change from powder to fruit does make for easier wearing (my only real complaint about L'Heure Bleue is that the powder billows ridiculously with more than the lightest application).

I ended up splurging on a bottle - only time will tell which I'll end up reaching for the most. While I feel like I might be sacrificing a touch of nuance for wearability, I think the depth is still there, especially witnessing the varied descriptions in these reviews, implying that there's a lot of hidden detail to smell even in this new version.

I am a big fan of L'Heure Bleue and recently became a big fan of Apres L'Ondee, both uniquely related in a fragrance category which seems to only exist in the world of Guerlain. After 1246 Basenotes reviews, I could safely say I have never found another scent that resembles either of these two icons.

Now, however, Guerlain itself has produced a third. L'Heure de Nuit begins with a dry anise predominating the initial impression. Then begins a very close approximaton to the original L'Heure Bleue. Nuit has far fewer ingredients than Bleue, but only the peach is "new." All others were part of the original Bleue formula (18 ingredients as compared with Nuit's 10).

Nuit is therefore less complex than Bleue, but close enough to approximate Bleue's effect to a lesser degree. The question is why would one want to pay three times the price for Nuit, when Bleue is better and less expensive?

The projection is great and the longevity excellent. A perfectly lovely homage to the original, but if anything, Nuit should be less expensive than Bleue in order to attract an appropriate audience.